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Chapter 273
🕑 Added 2024-12-05 04:50:37 +0000 UTCWhat brings contentment? It is not glory, for glory demands victory, and victory begets loss. It is not success, for success requires effort, and effort destroys the soul. It is not family, for family require your mind, and your mind is yours alone. It is not station, for station puts you above others, and social standing brings pride. Nor is it pleasure nor pain, arousal nor abstinence. Contentment can only come through abnegation, submission, and obedience to the holy, to the ruler, and to our god.
The Gran Verat brings contentment.
-From the Ideals of Ardaliana
“No, we follow. Lord, we follow.”
This was the third swarm Alpha that immediately submitted themself to me. The other two, females, had offered themselves to me but I’d waved them off with a general excuse of not wanting to leave eggs behind. Sybil shot me glances each time I’d done so, but I’d merely restated my position on monogamy. Perhaps it was a sort of carryover from my previous life, or maybe something that many keelish and khatif would choose. Maybe something else would change when we became Keel. I couldn’t say, and I didn’t care. I desired only my mate, and I didn’t see that changing any time soon.
Leaving aside the immediate surrender of all power and leadership to me when we arrived reeked of either a significant increase to the keelish’s intelligence, or the sheer impact of my new [Absolute Dominance] [Skill]. That combined with my many other leadership/domination aligned [Skills] meant that the mere moment that the other swarms saw me, they trembled where they stood and bowed whenever they saw me, even now. To say that I didn’t enjoy it would be a falsehood, and I didn’t care if the others knew I enjoyed their adoration. Joral especially had taken to exemplifying my own approach to leadership before the herds, and they followed him more demurely than the latest generation of tamed beast. I couldn’t say specifically if that came because of whatever magic he had, as a byproduct of Sybil, Shemira, and Farahlia’s magics, or something else entirely, but Joral alone could drive well over half of the thousands of beasts alone. With the Voltaic Wolfstags, all of which, except Arwa, obviously considered him to be their master, Joral could manage the entire body of our herds.
Yes, thousands, now. For weeks, we had continued our journey, picking up stray herds and keelish wherever we went, and the greater our numbers, the more easily we subjugated. Thrice, we had encountered other indlovu, though once they saw our well-tended herds and ability to tame an askari, we parted on neutral, if not friendly terms. Even so, our presence was not celebrated, and our rampant pilfering of herds was not well-received. However, as we met the Mumara, Kutril, and Acqamba tribes, they took obvious pleasure in our ability to steal away herds from those whose stewardships we’d passed through before.
Chieftain Lukusu of the Acqamba especially enjoyed hearing we’d taken the herd of oxfiends from the Yegolide, and Qaqambi specifically.
“That wrinkly man!” He’d shouted, “He is a good leader! He could have found violence, but he found himself without a herd in his stewardship, so he pointed you forward!” His trumpeting laugh was echoed by a dozen of his guards. Meeting each tribe, I realized that each had their own decorations for their leather wraps and tusks; the Yegolide carved their tusks and dyed their leathers, while the Linqata carefully scrubbed their tusks clean. The Mumura fashioned steel caps for their tusks, while the Kutril left the tusk plain and their armor filigreed. Chieftain Lukusu’s tusks were a strange mix of the Mumura and Yegolide, carved with inlaid gold.
“Does that mean he didn’t want to be our friend?” I asked, my frill twitching as the gregarious chieftain sent his askari to pick at my skin for the third time.
“Did he call you friend?” He asked, voice plain.
“Yes.”
“Then he is your friend until you decide to change that! Not all friends begin wielding the same iklabhu, but once they begin their companionship, it requires for one to release his hold on his foe’s weapon. Thus opening himself up to the same attack, and Qaqambi will never be the first to release the iklabhu of peace. Or use the iklabhu of peace to destroy war. He is called the Shatterer of Three Stone Hill for good reason.” Lukusu shook his trunk in my face for emphasis. I ignored it as I asked another question.
“So is he something like the head chieftain of the Republic? Even Allatsu who hated him respected Qaqambi.”
“No!” Lukusu scoffed. “There is no Inkulu’aka. If Qaqambi dared to call himself that, then I would lead the charge to beat that idea from his thick skull. Sometimes, the Inkulu think they are in charge, but they have no supporters, though their stewardship has been perfect for all my years.”
Having long since learned exactly how long the indlovu lived, I could guess that was at least 100 years. “So there exists a head chieftain, the Inkulu’aka, but there is none now. How long has it been since the last one?”
“Before my grandfather’s time.” Lukusu waved his trunk at me dismissively. “Only in times when our people are threatened by something beyond our borders, and though many only remember their great grandfathers’ great grandfathers’ stories, they know not to cross our people. We do not hunt how we fight, for our soldiers do not hunt.” Lukusu looked in my eyes at his declaration, and I understood what he was getting at: we’d never seen one of their soldiers.
“Whose stewardship lays beyond yours?”
“The Inkulu.” For once, Lukusu didn’t have a joke, a jibe, or a witticism. Just. The Inkulu.
“Would you like us to do the same thing we’ve done here there?”
“Oh, yes.” Lukusu suppressed the barest hint of a grin.
“But you do not think that we should. That it would be foolish to.”
“Perhaps. They have many soldiers, and they do not recognize the hunt as most do.”
It sounded like a challenge. I so desperately wanted to rob more from the Inkulu than any other, to pillage and leave a bare desert in our path. But I’d been warned specifically about what a soldier was, and though I desperately wanted to face one, to do so while traveling with the entirety of my people perhaps wasn’t the best time.
“Perhaps not yet. Beyond the Inkulu, whose stewardships remain?”
“Theirs is the largest, and the last. Beyond that lay the ruins of your people’s kingdom, or so I am told. Our people do not readily leave our stewardships.”
The brief flare of disappointment at the thought of being cautious was burned away by the passion and excitement of reaching our goal, of finding Nievtra, of finally speaking the entirety of the Words of Power, of becoming Keel. “Then that’s where we’re going. I won’t wait, but I thank you for the guidance. May your beds be firm, your meals full, and your skin unblemished.”
“May your stewardship prosper and your children be wise.”
Shemira, impatient and eavesdropping, had already begun to spread the word, that our destination was in sight, that we would soon find where to stop, that we would find home. The call of a true end to our journey was too much, and the keelish, especially those from my original swarm, long lamented the loss of any true home. The few pelts we’d carried with us were far from enough to bring the comfort of a den, or something better, and soon, we’d be there.
